In a recent post, Kayla and Chloe, of the ONA group WSA352, made some excellent points about the Myatt-Obsessed Anonymous Coward, the subject of several posts here on the MadMageMyatt blog, which Myatt-Obsessed Anonymous Coward has, for several years, been flooding message boards, forums and Internet blogs with hundreds of rants about David Myatt and Anton Long.

WSA352 get to the heart of the matter, stating in their post that:

1) almost everything that the majority of people believe, think or know or assume about Myatt himself is based on what they have read on the Internet;

2) the majority of this information about Myatt available on the Internet is posted by people who have never met him; therefore, this information is suspect;

3) the only thing this crazy lunatic is doing is working for Myatt; creating more interest in The Mad Mage;

4) ” Myatt is a trickster, and that he does have people who go around Glamourizing him or spreading mythical propaganda about him….. I know, because I do this very same thing from time to time.”

What, therefore, do we know about Myatt himself? What are the proven facts of his life, referenced by credible, non-partisan, sources?

The proven facts are as follows.

The Life, Times, and Works, of David Myatt

Myatt grew up in East Africa (where his father worked as a civil servant for the British government) and later in the Far East, where he studied the Martial Arts. (See Footnote 1) He moved to England in 1967 to complete his schooling, and began a degree in Physics but did not complete it, leaving his studies to focus on his political activism. (2) He lives in the Midlands (3) and has been married three times.

Political scientist Professor George Michael has written that Myatt is an “intriguing theorist,” with an IQ of 187, who has embarked over the years on a series of “Faustian quests.” (4) He studied Taoism and spent time in a Buddhist and later a Christian monastery (5).

Myatt joined Colin Jordan’s British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, in 1968, where he sometimes acted as Jordan’s bodyguard at meetings and rallies. (6) From the 1970s until the 1990s, Myatt remained involved with paramilitary and neo-Nazi organizations such as Column 88 and Combat 18, (7) (8) and was imprisoned twice for violent offences in connection with his political activism. (9)

Myatt was the founder and first leader of the National Socialist Movement (10) of which David Copeland was a member. He also co-founded, with Eddy Morrison, the neo-Nazi organization the NDFM (National Democratic Freedom Movement) which was active in Leeds, England, in the early 1970s, (11) and also founded the neo-Nazi Reichsfolk group. (12).

Myatt took over the leadership of Combat 18 in 1997, when Charlie Sargent, the previous leader, was arrested for murder. (13) (14)

Influence on David Copeland

In November 1997, Myatt posted an allegedly racist and allegedly anti-Jewish pamphlet he had written called Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution on a website run out of British Columbia, Canada, by Bernard Klatt. The pamphlet included chapter titles such as “Assassination,” “Terror Bombing,” and “Racial War.” (15) According to Michael Whine of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, “the contents provided a detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection with advice on assassination targets, rationale for bombing and sabotage campaigns, and rules of engagement.” (16)

In February 1998, Police Officers from Scotland Yard raided Myatt’s home in Worcestershire and removed his computers and files. He was arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, and conspiracy to murder, but the case was dropped after a three year long investigation because the evidence supplied by the Canadian authorities was not enough to secure a conviction. (17)

It was this pamphlet that, in 1999, allegedly influenced David Copeland, the London nailbomber – also a member of Myatt’s National Socialist Movement – who planted homemade bombs in Brixton, Brick Lane, and inside the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street in London, frequented by the black, Asian, and gay communities respectively. Friends John Light, Nick Moore, and Andrea Dykes and her unborn child died in the Admiral Duncan pub. Copeland told police he had been trying to spark a “racial war.” (18)

According to the BBC’sPanorama, in 1998 when Myatt was leader of the NSM, he called for “the creation of racial terror with bombs.” (19)

Conversion to Islam
Myatt converted to Islam in 1998 (20) (21) (22) (23) (24), having been impressed by the militancy of Islamist groups, and believing that he shared common enemies with Islam, namely “the capitalist-consumer West and international finance.” (25) (26)
Following his conversion to Islam, he began writing about Islam, produced hundreds of articles, many of which advocate Islamic martyrdom operations, express support for Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban, and, in line with Al Qaida’s radical Islamist stance, support the killing of non-combatants. One of Myatt’s articles justifying suicide attacks was, for several years, on the Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the military wing) section of the Hamas website. (27)

Myatt was mentioned at a NATO conference on terrorism in 2005, and again at another such conference a year later (28) (29) where it was claimed he had incited and encouraged violent Jihad, and “suicide attacks”.

According to a report (30) in The Times newspaper, headlined Muslim Extremists in Britain, Myatt stated that:

“The pure authentic Islam of the revival, which recognises practical jihad as a duty, is the only force that is capable of fighting and destroying the dishonour, the arrogance, the materialism of the West … For the West, nothing is sacred, except perhaps Zionists, Zionism, the hoax of the so-called Holocaust, and the idols which the West and its lackeys worship, or pretend to worship, such as democracy… Jihad is our duty. If nationalists, or some of them, desire to aid us, to help us, they can do the right thing, the honourable thing, and convert, revert, to Islam — accepting the superiority of Islam over and above each and every way of the West.”

Greek Translations, Poetry, and The Numinous Way

Myatt has translated works by Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Homer (31) (32) (33). He has also written several small volumes of poetry (34).

Myatt has also developed a mystical, pagan, philosophy which he called The Numinous Way (35) (36).

References:

(1) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 142.

(2) (a) Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press, 2002; (b) Ryan, Nick. Homeland: Into A World of Hate. Mainstream Publishing Company Ltd., 2002

(3) Sunday Mercury newspaper (Birmingham, England), 9 July 2000

(4) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 142

(5) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 143

Jeffrey Kaplan (University of Helsinki) in Krista Vogelberg, Raili Pöldsaar. Negotiating Spaces on the Common Ground: Selected Papers of the 3rd and 4th International Tartu Conferences on North-American Studies. Tartu University Press, 2000

Jeffrey Kaplan, Religiosity and the Radical Right: Toward the Creation of a New Ethnic Identity, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjorgo, eds., Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Northeastern University Press, 1998)

(13) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 142

(33)Smith, S. Epic Logos: On First Looking into Several Homers. 2004. Paper presented as part of an academic project supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technlogy (BFF 2002-02842), the Communidad Autónoma of La Rioja (ANGI-2002/05) and the University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain (API-02-35).

(34) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas.

(35) Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas.

(36) Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life. The Numinous Way Foundation, 2009.

Everything else we assume we know about Myatt, or may have heard or read about him – other than the documented facts, above – may therefore be taken as unproven; as hearsay; or as rumor; or as speculation; or as possible disinformation.

This includes whether or not Myatt founded, or was and is a member of, The Order of Nine Angles. Whether or not Anton Long (of ONA fame) is or is not one of Myatt’s pseudonyms; whether or not Myatt has abandoned Islam in favor of his own mystical Numinous Way philosophy; and whether or not Myatt sincerely converted to Islam or was just using radical Islam to further his claimed subversive agenda.

Myatt himself has always, and consistently, (a) denied being involved with the ONA and (b) denied using the pseudonym Anton Long, stating that no one has ever produced any evidence to prove otherwise. He has also, according to a statement issued by him on 16 Shaban 1430 (August 7, 2009), not recently, or ever, abandoned Islam in favor of either The Numinous Way, or of anything else. That is, he is now, and has been since his conversion, a Muslim. Myatt also states that only three individuals – out of the thousands, or tens of thousands, who must have read rumors of his abandonment of Islam on the Internet – bothered to contact him to ask for “his side of the story”.